The blind spot of secularism is when it sets itself up as privileged, in the sense of being ‘scientific’. What follows from this is a limited, oppositional discourse as if two great armies were facing each other in battle where only one can win. Keeping this strict, uncompromising dichotomy on the part of the secularists is done because it gains them much needed attention. The secularist can sell his message of, look at the wonders of technology and the freedom you have from religious persecution and its backwardness. With this, the secularist becomes a warrior against all that is religious: a defender of technology, materialism, and hedonism. Ironically, the secularist seems closer to occultist Aleister Crowley’s famous maxim, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
Sadly, the defenders of religious thought are too weak to show the secularists their wrong headedness, especially, that their diatribes against religious values fail to take into account the violent history of secularism in the example of Communism’s horrible Red Terror, not to mention its moral hypocrisy (do as I say, not as I do) granted to the secularist but not to those who practice a particular religion such as Buddhism.
A more recent history of secularism’s influence on religion, one only has to look at the history of the vicious divide between religious Jews and secular, nationalist Jews (Zionists) in which religious Judaism is, systematically, being wiped out. The religious and spiritual goal of Judaism, Shiviti YHVH l’negdi tamid (I am mindful of the presence of G-d always), has all been but lost to the influence of secular concerns and ambitions. Now the same kind of forces have taken hold of Buddhism ignoring the fact that Buddhism is about nirvana which transcends the secular world. As far as Christianity is concerned, its secularization is almost complete with only a facade left. A typical Christians shows off their Christianity but cannot say what Christ’s “kingdom of God” is because it is not worldly, that is, secular.
The good news is that the subject of consciousness, in its own right, which is much closer to God and to nirvana; which has so long been ignored by the natural sciences, is being seriously explored causing a kind of paradigm angst, at least for the particle-believers which may very well end up being fictions as compared with immaterial waves which chime more with consciousness.
This post has its merits, I agree with it in many respects, I just wanted to share something I recently found that I figured you may be interested in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NpAJ6Zg9Xs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKuwWBYHQ50
Posted by: Mr.Nobody | March 24, 2016 at 10:18 AM